Thursday, November 29, 2012

Smite - Patch Notes - Dec 3, 2012

PRELIMINARY SMITE PATCH NOTES - NOV 30, 2012 RELEASE

New Gamemode: Domination

Several Obelisks of Power have appeared in Egypt. Control them to gain victory.
Average game time is around 20 minutes.
Match Objectives:
There are three control points.
Each team starts with 400 tickets.
Enemy tickets are reduced when your side controls two of the three points, as well as for each enemy kill.
Reduce the enemy team to zero tickets to win the match.
Other Info:
You start at level three with 1500 gold.
Neutral camps provide buffs but do not deduct tickets.
Your team respawns together in waves.
You will earn normal match rewards. Note that Domination has its own first win of the day bonus.

General Features:
[STILL TESTING. PRELIMINARY] In addition to the five permanently free gods (Ra, Kali, Ymir, Sun WuKong, and Artemis), there will now be an additional five free gods at any point in time. The free additional gods will rotate over time. (You will still need to purchase a god in order to ensure permanent access).
When you first enter the match lobby in either Conquest Normal or Conquest Ranked gamemodes, the top-ranked player on each side now has the opportunity to ban a god from play. When a god is banned, it is banned for both sides. All gods are bannable (Note that we had previously communicated that free gods would not be bannable, but reversed that decision after adding the additional free rotating gods).
If enough people are in queue we respect your preferred region when match making. You choose your preferred region on the PLAY screen.
In the Settings menu, you can now choose between 3 different ability casting options:
Normal Casting Mode: A targeting decal is placed on the ground when you hit the ability button, and then the ability is fired when you left mouse click.
Quick Casting Mode: A targeting decal is placed on the ground when you push down the ability button, and the ability is fired when you release the ability button.
Instant Casting Mode: The ability is fired as soon as you press the ability button, with no targeting decal.
The time spent in a “matching state” on timed queues is now drastically reduced, so that you should be sent into the match lobby much faster.
Auto-purchase settings will now be stored server-side at a player level. This should prevent users have these settings reset after each patch (Note: Settings will be reset upon this patch, but should not be reset during the next patch).
If you receive a party invite while alt-tabbed out of the game, you will now receive an out-of-match notification, similar to the notification you receive when you are alt-tabbed out of the game and receive a match invite.
Towers have had their health increased (excluding Phoenixes).

UI Changes:

The Settings menu has undergone a UI overhaul. There are now tabs for different settings areas.

The Play button on the top-bar menu is now better highlighted.
A variety of UI cleanups have been made to the PLAY screen. This includes:
Users may also now select their preferred server region.
Your last selected tab is persisted across logins (so you will return to the PvP tab if that was your last selected tab the last time you played).
The buttons now read “Join” and “Leave” instead of “Join Queue” and “Leave Queue”.
Once you join a queue, you are restricted from clicking on other queues until you leave the queue.
Several other cleanups.
The sizing and positioning of the in-game web browser has been modified.
The sell button in the in-game item store has been modified.
Several cleanups and improvements have been made to the Social menus.
Several other minor bug fixes and visual cleanups.

Abilities:

Creeping Curse
The active slow has been reduced from 35% to 30%.
The cooldown has been increased to 150s.

Hand of the Gods
Damage done to minions has been reduced by 20%.
Passive has been changed so that you take 30% less damage from Jungle minions.

Heavenly Agility
The active speed buff has been increased from 35% to 40%.
Duration of the buff has been reduced from 5s to 3s.
This ability now makes you immune to slows for the active duration.
The cooldown has been increased to 150s.

Intensify Defenses has been temporarily removed.

Meditation
The passive has been changed so that when you have less than 40% of your mana, your mana regeneration is doubled.
mp5 removed from this passive
The cooldown has been increased to 120s.

Purification Beads
This ability removes pulls again.
The cooldown has been increased to 120s.

Sprint
The lifetime of the active speed buff has been changed to 6s.
The cooldown has been increased to 150s.

Items:

Recommended items that had mana potions have now been changed to healing potions.

Jungle:

The XP reward for clearing a buff camp has been reduced by 50%.
Protection Buff Camp
The protection camp has had its buff reduced from +50 to +35.

Gods:

General
Base movement speed of gods has been increased by 10%.

Projectile speeds on basic ranged attacks has been increased from 70 ft/sec to 100 ft/sec. Anhur, Artemis and Cupid are still at 110 ft/sec.

Cupid
PASSIVE - Lovestruck
When an ability is used that consumes 10 stacks, Cupid also gains a 20% buff to his physical power for 6s.
Heart Bomb
Damage type has been changed from physical to magical.
Base damage has been increased from 50/80/110/140/170 to 60/100/140/180/220.
Damage contribution has been changed from 60% physical to 100% magical.
Share the Love
Base healing has been increased from 30/50/70/90/110 to 45/70/95/120/145.
Damage contribution has been changed from 40% physical to 30% magical.
Flutter
Attack speed buff duration has been increased from 4s to 6s.
All ranks now gain 2% attack speed per stack of Lovestruck.
Lovestruck stacks now consumed by Flutter.
Fields of Love
Damage type has been changed from physical to magical
Base damage has been increased from 175/225/275/325/375 to 225/290/355/420/485.
Damage contribution has been changed from 100% physical to 120% magical.

Freya
Irradiate
Decreased the cooldown from 13s to 11s.
Pulse
Decreased the cooldown from 13s to 11s.
Banish
Increased the duration of the banish from 1/1.5/2/2.5/3s to 1.4/1.8/2.2/2.6/3s.

Sobek
PASSIVE - Armor of the Nile
Name has been changed to Blessing of the Nile
Each hit now also gives Sobek +15 physical power, stacking up to 3
times.

Thor
Tectonic Rift
The fissure now appears almost instantly, doing 75/115/155/195/235 (+60% of your physical power) physical damage and stunning enemies for 1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2s.
Anvil of Dawn
Reduced the amount of time the warning is visible when Thor is about to come crashing down.

Sorry for the lack of formatting. This was copy/pasted from the pastebin that Bart copy/pasted into from his Google Docs.

So I'm really liking the way this patch seems to be shaping up. Finally introducing bans is something that I'm glad is finally (hopefully) going to be here. Bans add an entire new dynamic to the meta-game of any MOBA and I can't wait to see what champions are favored bans.

Continued ability item changes are really nice. Its great to see that Hi-rez is keeping an incredibly close eye on what abilities are performing on what skill levels and which ones need buffs/nerfs.

I don't really want to say anything about Cupid until I can try him out as a support but he looks promising.

The Thor buffs are completely baller and 110% amazing. They're going total Earthshaker with him and I love it so much. Thor is one of my favorite gods in the game and these buffs are incredibly welcoming.